Clandestine
by Mongoosey
Summary: Wicked. AvaricElphaba, perhaps some FiyeroElphaba. Strange. "Elphaba never really understand why they all wanted him like that. She shrugged. He wasn't that big anyway."
1. Lesson 143

**Authors Note: Not mine, Gregory Maguire's characters. Book-verse. An AU of sorts, focusing in on a strange twist of biblical references, the weird "You didn't bleed when I entered you" part of the book, and the theory that yes, hatred is an extreme aphrodisiac, but an aphrodisiac indeed. Recognizable lyrics belong to Stephen Schwartz's Children of Eden.**

**Clandestine**

_Elphaba never really understood why they all wanted him like that. She shrugged. He wasn't that big anyway._

**Chapter 1: Lesson 1 4 3**

"It's what we are forced to believe, almost, in a way, that exposes us to what we don't believe, or are not allowed to. Perhaps we consider the opposition fervently. No one likes to be told what to do and what not to do. Perhaps the push to the intended belief forces us to the complete opposite of the spectrum, which is also manipulation in a sense."

Elphaba remembers arguing about that once. It was a night in summer, and the evening sky shone a black-cerulean color, a color too disturbing and beautiful for even the Vinkus people to recreate in their shawls and dancing skirts.

Boq was there, at the canal, drinking a bit and arguing with her ("Maybe manipulation is nothing but an excuse for freedom of will") and she could vaguely recall Fiyero, Avaric, Glinda, Crope and Tibbett. Crope was stumbling and playing drunkenly with Tibbet's hair, and perhaps Glinda didn't really notice Boq whispering closer and closer to her reddened face?

She thinks that it was the first time Boq kissed Glinda, or was the first time before that, when we visited her at the vacation house? Anyway, all other details appeared blurry, for typical nights seem to pale in comparison to what we prefer to remember as much more important nights.

Later, when the copious amounts of alcohol affected them all, the sky still appeared the same gorgeous and disfigured blue, except this time, it acted as the aphrodisiac: an excuse for freedom of will.

Fiyero's body glistened with moisture, his muscles rippling under his deep tan skin, dark and pleasurably barbaric. He exposed a total of seven diamonds: two on those splendid hands, two on his adjacent upper arms, two the tight plane of his abdomen, and one right under the joint that connects face and neck, where the pulse of blood is located. Never having flirted before, she trembled with both nervousness and desire.

Fuck.

She remembers walking away after struggling to talk with him. She remembers feeling a failure, fighting tears, not only for pride, but for safety from stinging her damn skin. She couldn't remember anyone asking where she was going; she guesses that she was always somehow moving away so perhaps they had quit asking.

Her legs burned, but where else could she hide her shame but under the bridge?

He's a prince, remember. Even though he's a prince of a nameless blameless throne, I'm the jester of a named blamed green.

"Fuck", the girl moaned. "Let the booze wear off already!"

She wanted the whole world to swallow her whole, and perhaps leave her soul, provided it wasn't green.

"Elf! What the hell are you doing, my drunk and disorderly not-so-pretty?"

Her brain swarmed with unwritten prospects of possibility and song. Perhaps it was the alcohol. She doesn't remember because this wasn't exactly a remembering sort of night.

Avaric didn't have time to speak with that devil's tongue of his. Her hands folded like green ribbons behind his head, and intertwined with his soft golden tendrils. He was being devoured and also devouring. The snakes in his body writhed with disgust and arousal; the snakes in her body both swooned and hated.

Ferociously grappling under the sublime sky, the most noted thing Elphaba remembers is how her eyes are open, and staring into gray blue irises.

Figures. She never trusted that bastard anyway.


	2. In Pursuit of Excellence

**Authors Note: Again, don't own anything atall. Stephen Schwartz for the nifty chapter titles, and Gregory Maguire for the characters and book. Thankie. Authors Warning: This fic is weird.**

**Clandestine **

**Chapter 2: In Pursuit of Excellence**

After that, so to speak, it was all water under the bridge. Hell and secret.

She remembers his fingers earnestly pushing her underwear to one side, his body spooning hers, his digits fluttering like butterflies on her clit.

The abandoned closet smelling of dust and stereotype; yeah, she remembers all of that.

The way her back arched when he entered from behind, and how good it felt when he slammed into her, her long black skirt hiked up to her waist. And when they'd do it marital style, how her fingers would dig little crescent Vinkus teacups on his pale muscular back, and ridiculously riddled with erotic hate, she would wish them to scar.

She remembers one afternoon in particular when he stumbled in her room, silent as usual, but _different_. Usually they would never show emotion with the exception of lust, which, as people know, isn't really an emotion but a sin of the scriptures.

"Good grief, what's wrong with you?" She didn't really mean to say it, period, and much less meant to say it strangled sarcastically.

He almost started at the novelty of communication between them.

"Concerned? This late in the game?" He silenced whatever she was obliged to say next with his pants dropping to the floor and pounced on her earnestly waiting body. He started with his tongue in her lower body this time, unusual for a selfish self-gratifying bastard like him. She gasped at the warm, probing strangeness that made her green self rack with decadent shivers. She whimpered, which she never does, and the Gillikinese raised an eyebrow but kept to his pleasuring.

Why not, she replied to the conventional voices in her head. Why not, she replied as she stared straight ahead at that blonde hair, bobbing up and down, and dipping from angle to angle.

Up until this point, Avaric decided and considered long and hard about suicide. Failing one of his classes-boring lectures with Sir Figury, the resident Geographical Philosophy teacher-was just the beginning of his end. Not that he actually cared what loomed beyond the great deserts of outer Oz, but it seemed indeed unfortunate since this time he actually needed that grade to apply for an internship at Oz Central.

Elphaba's inattentive eyes fluttered with every dart of his tongue. Shenshen or Pfannee problems, she reasoned to the best of her diverted attention. Yes, probably that.

He couldn't get erect in front of Shenshen; the problem was equally apparent in front of Pfannee even, he admitted guiltily, Miss Milla. He beat it, he spit in his hand and beat it, he swiveled his hips when they took it in their mouths, he rubbed it against their sex, he pushed it between breasts, he even tried desperate strange measures such as asphyxiation and bondage.

Then again, he shamefully considered. What desperate strange measure doesn't include fucking the green girl?

Elphaba whimpered some more as he squirmed his fingers into her. When she overheard Shenshen gossiping to other girls about how great of a man he was in bed, she shrugged. Elphaba never understood why they all wanted him like that. She shrugged. He wasn't that big anyway.

Not compared to that Quadling boy, anyway.

But she digressed, and lost herself in the pleasure of his tongue and hands. Oh Unnamed God, those hands were blessed. She loved the silky feeling of a rich boy's hand and tongue attacking her sex willingly in a naughty effort, she reasoned, to secure a spot in hell.

He stopped, and she felt the smooth underside of a finger sketch soft letters on a particular spot. He moved his head up and peered at her in curiosity.

She paused for a second, not quite knowing how to explain herself. "Snake bite", unintentionally slipped out. She thought, as usual, he would go back to his "work" and ignore any possibility of comprehension, and therefore was quite surprised to see his handsome face still hovering above her abdomen.

"A snake bit you _here_? How is this possible?" He lightly fingered her scar, a darker green than her body, it shaped a side V shape. "Very" she responded curtly, now propping herself on her elbows. "Very possible."

"What were you, naked somewhere in the forest?" He sneered at that, as if the idea of it seemed very lower-class, but also hardened at that, the secretive taboo of it all.

"My pretty, naked doesn't even begin to cover it." With his apparent appendix bulging, she flashed a bit of sharp teeth. "Sit up, boy. Mama's going to tell you a story." He complied and sat up so that his erection pressed lightly on her pelvic bone. She breathed in.

"In Ovvels when I was about sixteen, I left the safety of the house to explore. There's a forest three miles from my home, yet the roots of the trees were swallowed by swampland. Through trial and error, I managed to discover that swamp water, in that area anyway, could not harm me." She stole a glance at him, finding his face rearranged in a bored manner. "And I prefer the company of other women."

"What?"

She continued, though, unabashed. "So you were listening. Anyway, I stopped at a tree, removed my clothing, and proceeded to wade in this odd swamp water naked. I climbed to the highest root above the water as I could find to rest for a moment. I saw a Snake curled around the base of the tree, as thick and huge as the tree itself."

"I don't recall ever being there."

"I said thick and huge, not tiny and invisible. So, this Snake creeps her head towards me, her eyes all sad and strange, and says…no, hisses, '_I'm sorry, Caine._' Sinks her teeth into my into my leg," she pointed to her inner thigh, tense and shaking as if remembering further, "and all I can think is how painful it is, the blood and venom coursing down my leg…" She shuddered. He instinctively lifted his arm in sympathy, then dropped it as soon as his conscious brain switched back on.

Her hair flew in black droplets around her face as she shook the memory off. "Not important." She murmured. "Not important." She repeated.

She would speak no more of that, even as they lay panting and done. This time, she noticed he accidentally kissed her skin in the heat of sex, uncommon as he only touched her sex, nipples, and mouth with his lips.

Parts that weren't green, she noted.

And she found herself dumb, as usual, and not being able to even breathe. She had a nightmare that night, of whispers hissing _Caine, sweet Caine, ill-favored Caine…Not your fault, Caine._

_Thou mayest, Caine. Sorry sweet._

She shuddered awake, sweat already clammy in the night-like morning. Elphaba ran her fingers through her mussed hair, and proceeded to stand to douse the sheets with oil before Glinda came back. Glinda had gone to try to talk to Ama Clutch after some ball, and that's why she was able to fuck Avaric so hard last night?

A sudden glint of gold distracted her from her cleaning, and she turned to face two glaring lake-blue eyes.

"Explain. Now."

Before she opened her mouth, she wondered quickly if the Unnamed God loved snakes at all.


	3. Once I Was A Feckless Dreamer

**Disclaimer: You know, I don't think I have to write one for every chapter, but hey. Gregory Maguire's, not mine.**

Author's Note (Not in bold in case this does not interest you at all): I saw Wicked the musical on January 7th. I creamed my pants. Fan girls clapped before the end of the Wizard and I song. I wanted to kill them. I am a converted fan of Idina Menzel. It was actually very inspiring, though. I thought it would completely butcher the book, but for some reason, it did have the basic points of the book. They just simplified it for people who can't read. (Ha ha.) But really, the character of Elphaba possessed a vague vulnerability that we do indeed, see in the book. In fact, the character of Elphaba is more explained than in the book, where one has to conclude her character by scraping together Maguire's observations. The musical is basically a fanfiction of a fanfiction.

**For Chudley Cannon**, whose stories I have yet to review and add them to favorites even though I love them AND have read them before writing these stories, yet do not do so in fear of looking like a reciprocating ass-kisser. I do know you people do that…I READ THE REVIEWS!

**Yesh. That was long. TOO LONG. No author's note next chapter. Promise.**

**Peter Pan. By JM Barrie.**

**Found in the book (Wicked) but written with no italics or parentheses. Understood better that way.**

**Chapter 3: Once I Was a Feckless Dreamer**

"You know, I still wouldn't like to have skin the color of shit."

They were all eating breakfast that one morning when the café opened early because of some kind of annual Wizard festival that pervaded the usually quiet neighboring town next to Shiz. The group probably consisted of Elphaba, Glinda, Boq, obviously Avaric, and perhaps Tibbett. Fiyero and Crope were probably still ordering their food at the counter or else Elphaba was sure Fiyero would've beat the hell out of Avaric.

Not that he would stoop that low.

"Funny, I prefer the color of his skin to yours, Avaric. Perhaps some tribal markings might remedy that boring pallor of yours." At the scathing remark, Boq opened his mouth to protest, but the blonde boy's dangerously low voice beat him to it.

"They say shit is a great fertilizer, Miss Elphaba. Why don't we arrange a room for the both of you? Maybe you can sit on him and grow."

"You do mistake me, Mister Avaric, for acting so small. What I meant regards something much bigger and larger than you, and I do mean that."

Glinda stared down at her eggs.

At that moment, Crope and Fiyero decided it would be a good time to join them and set their plates down on the table. Boq shifted nervously.

"Hey, wha'd you guys get?" He shot a warning glance in Elphaba's and Avaric's directions, then continued to pester Crope about the lackluster food.

Both parties refused to talk for the duration of the meal.

Later that day in one of the abandoned alleys about town, Elphaba gasped as her back connected hard with a brick wall. Her back burned with shivers of pain, but nothing seemed to deter her satisfaction in those burning gray eyes.

"A bit callous this morning, dear Elphaba?" He hissed through clenched jaws.

"Jealous, darling?" She felt his body push hers harder into the wall as she gazed up from night colored lashes.

"Jealous?" He threw his head back and laughed. "Jealous of that fucking darkling prince? Jealous of that damn Winkie who's got the attention of a fucking ugly green whore that I don't give a shit about?" His eyes glittered with something akin to disbelief and anger.

"Jealously will drive you _mad_", she whispered, flinching at the quiet sting of the word "ugly".

"Did you know Glinda knows about me?" Even then, she knew he could never say the two lettered word, "us".

Quickly, however, both their assurances to an enigmatic hell consoled that grievance of hers.

"You come in my room every night."

Funny, she mused, how Horrible Morrible set a blind eye to the two of them. It had been a month and a half now, wouldn't the old bat suspect anything? He let out a strangled hiss, madness-a certainty, Elphaba thought-tattooed in the whites of his eyes.

"Not tonight. I'm failing my Geographical Philosophies. Fuck." Elphaba's breathing quickened as his erection pumped clothed unto her dress. Nimbly, her green fingers fluttered as she hiked up her black dress, and he, still pushing her urgently against the wall, ripped the top of her buttons like a madman. He snaked his freezing hand into her ripped bodice, then held her up as his mouth found a nipple.

It was done fast, urgent, and scintillatingly dirty.

She refused to look at Glinda after she had run back to their room, soaking with sin.

If sin was water, though, it didn't burn much.

It was darkening when she arrived back, and in the dark she could also see Avaric, or someone that vaguely resembled him in both sorrow and beauty.

And in the dark, when she pulled the dusty covers over her body, there Glinda was. An Arduenna of the Uplands, there she sat with golden ringlets drooping down her lowered head like clouds too heavy with heaven's burden, yet too buoyant with heaven's promises to sink.

Glinda stared bleakly into the butterflies of dust existing in every ray of mothy, urine light left, and Elphaba watched her from the one eye cleverly poking from the fold of her blanket cover.

A one-sided Arduenna. A one-sided Arduenna was what she looked like to Elphaba Thropp just then. Poor Glinda, too unhappy because she will never be a full Arduenna. Yet envy Elphaba felt, for unlike her, in the most vulnerable of moments, she will always be able to hold her pinkie up as she nursed a cup of tea. She will never slump, even when her head is bowed.

By that, Elphaba will also never understand why Avaric shudders when he cums, his face twisted in both repulsion and what she will later recognize as something completely opposite.

"Sleep, Elphie. I can still smell him on you." Glinda's tone was harsh and tired.

But she couldn't sleep and her thoughts wandered until finally, she had to divert them to tomorrow's lecture with Doctor Nikidik and something funny Crope said that afternoon.

Later, very later, when all the stars disappeared into the violet cloud of night, Elphaba awoke to another layer of human skin enveloping hers. Face down, only his muscular back and naked ass showed. The flawless green, even in the dark, contrasted irresponsibly with the marble skin. The bed near hers rustled prematurely, feigned breathing masking her own. She directed her gaze to the ceiling above her.

"I thought you needed to finish your Philosophies paper." She hadn't bothered to whisper; there were no secrets in this room.

He didn't answer, so his silence answered for him.

She fluttered her fingers through his vaguely curly hair, twirling a tendril of her own in her left hand. He became hard again and through muffled moans and clamped lips they did it.

Afterwards, he smirked, a mocking kiss (1), and placed it on her earlobe.

"You know, I could probably marry you."

Her lips, usually gray against her candy-apple skin (2), glistened red with the mistake of a passionate bite. Opening one eye with a heavy lid, he had the faintest idea of what the snake looked like.

Wrapping her legs around Avaric, with him between her legs, she moaned slightly.

"You're not _that_ stupid." Fastly falling asleep, she breathed his scent through her mouth.

"You're not that stupid."

_Even for a Gillikinese of decaying nobility_.

...Perhaps we are all meant to play with the broken pieces better.


	4. Time For Some Sophisticating

**Disclaimer: Not mine, but Gregory Maguire's.**

Author's Note: Ok, I lied. Watched some great movies over the weekend: Aviator, Phantom of the Opera, Head in the Clouds. Kind of a short chapter, but don't worry. Next one should be way more disturbing but hey, that's human nature. Must not shy from human nature now, hmm? That would be called lying. I don't want to do that.

For Oasis Dreamer.

**Chapter 4: Time For Some Sophisticating**

"_What's your nerve?"_

He watched her green face, animated as usual, shrink with the increasing distance until the background swallowed everything.

He shook his head, golden strands flickering in the candlelight, reflecting his image on the window. He focused on that.

Fuck the background.

Shenshen giggled nervously next to him, placing her nimble fingers on his thigh. The touch forced him to tear his gaze from the window, and, through said tearing, noticed his attention fixated on the reflection of the lime trim of his overcoat. Avaric turned and offered his best charming smile.

"Yes, dearest?" She giggled some more, twirling her hair. She reeked of fermented grapes and cream, her soft thighs spreading on the leather seat like the silent unrest in the cabin.

"Aaa-va-ric! Where are we going again?" she slurred.

No one answered for a while. Even breathing seemed impossible; the only noise was the dismembered noise of horse hooves trampling the dry ground.

Boq, silent after his outburst earlier-apparently ashamed, as much as a drunk man can be-shot a helpless glance at Shenshen, then Fiyero, then Crope, then Tibbett, then Avaric.

Pfannee was staring out the window. Her voice vibrated slightly as she spoke and Avaric noticed, perhaps for the first time, how very young she looked.

How very young they all looked.

"The Philosophy Club."

"**Was there incense in the air too? It seemed to make Boq's mind split in half, like a husk, and allow a tenderer, complacent mind to emerge. The softer, more bruisable aspect, the private intention, the surrendering self."**

Where was he again?

Where was he?

A most notorious haze crippled his sight; everything seemed tinted with a common color. Whips, he heard whips, maybe. The musky scent of semen and berries molested his nostrils as another scent, the lovely stink of damp fur caused him to start, unaware of his momentary blindness. The scene before him played out slow and deliberate, much like a woman slowly undressing, except in place of that woman, naked and erect, bucked Tibbett.

And Tibbett only.

In a few years Avaric will realize, or start to, that this very event was actually of some importance; a revealing of cracks in a bowl scrubbed too hard, if one may visualize, the beginning of the end. This is where Tibbett will start to become just Tibbett, and Crope, Crope, and Crope only.

But right now, in the present, he was not allowed to be aware of things, matters of such importance.

A groan escaped that richly fed mouth of his, and Shenshen's hands fingered with his belt. A sideways glance and he saw Fiyero, the diamonds on his hands blurring together as they sped up and down his princely shaft. His eyes rolled back into that head of his and he saw Boq, and Boq's face screaming three syllables GA-LIN-DA. Three elves pounced hungrily on Pfannee, a clever one nipping at her quivering thighs. A dwarf straddled Crope's inert body all the while painting Crope's lips and eyes with a lump of charcoal rouge. The bride-to-be adorned a sequined mask; her lover shuddered as he entered and stole the virginity of every orifice.

The dancers swung their hips in tune with the sexual noises of broken inhibitions and debauchery. Everything glittered and stank, unceasingly, as if the all the horrors and the beauties in the world were all contained in this tiny room.

All too soon the warm, supple body of Shenshen enveloped his; he was hard then, and finally. There is hope for me yet, he thought, or would have had thoughts ever existed in that club of sin.

Her body swallowed him whole, but alas. Her nimble fingers fluttered too nimbly, her touch too tender, her hips too in sync. So he closed his eyes for a while. Shenshen bucked her hips into his pelvis.

_"I certainly will not touch you." "The elf in the self regrets."_

_"Master Avaric, the Margreave Descending from Tenmeadows, Gillikin."_

"_Mama's going to tell you a story."_

"_Jealous, darling?"_

"_I could marry you." "You're not that stupid."_

_All angles and nails, his back burned with bites and crescent Vinkus cups. She never closes her eyes. She doesn't trust him. He gives her reason not to. She's on her belly and he's entering her from the back but she doesn't flinch. Green and screaming and many times silent._

Shenshen whimpered.

_Oh but Unnamed God, that green. It's disgusting._

Avaric growled, a familiar need rushing through his innards; he fought the urge to release. He clenched both teeth and hands until the skin under his nails slipped in blood.

It should burn.

Dammit.

There's the Snake, she's naked and prostrated before him. Did they know her nipples were not green, but actually a stranger shade of pink? Did they know what pattern her pubic hair grew?

_Did they know her outer lips were, in fact, green?_

They shuddered, all of them, and inside all of the smoke and the mirrors in the club, they were all aware of everything and everyone at the same time and no one (Yackle would make sure) will forget it, _this_, anytime soon.

"Elphaba!"

Then they all exploded into tiny stars.


	5. No Sin To Be Scintillating

Author's Note: A great thanks to Yvi, who, if reading this, gave me much strength and "hele-on" that I needed for this piece. The email was unexpected and well-received. It cements me so much to see that the people who do enjoy this enjoy my experimentation, however strange, with the characters. Thanks.  
Disclaimer: Not mine. Maguire's. 

**Chapter 5: No Sin to Be Scintillating**

"_**But Dorothy's right," said the Scarecrow. "No one is exempt from grief."**_

"Nice to see you again, Margreave."

The man nodded as garlands of flowers exploded into petals behind him, the continuous layers of alabaster white irritating his eyes. He hoped the good shoes and suit he was wearing lasted through the day; there were copious amounts of red wine and pastries.

Those servants had better be balanced, he thought. Fuck if they ruin something their week wages will never pay.

He deftly snatched a drink from a moving tray. Weddings always irritated him. He chugged the damn thing down, retching inwardly at the taste. Glinda couldn't afford anything tastier? Someone in particular caught his eye and he sauntered down the aisle, wondering if the bride wouldn't mind his premature departure from her most _marvelous_ guests.

"Boq, my good sir, how do you fare?" He smirked quite deviously, knowing in advance about his friend's elopement with a certain Miss Milla. Boq, in turn, smiled warmly and placed a freckled hand on his comrade's expensive shoulder.

"Avaric. Lurine, it's been years." Avaric's shoulder slumped in relief and smiling also, he took Boq's face in his hands and kissed his forehead and cheeks, an upper class Gillikinese custom that he knew bothered Boq.

To Boq, Avaric looked as dashing as ever. Fantastic build, immaculate hair (Boq fretted wildly about his; Bfee had started losing his during his mid-twenties) and terrific teeth. If anything, since graduation, Avaric had gotten much more good-looking…which couldn't be said for some of them. Avaric nodded involuntarily as if reading his private thoughts.

"Heard about you and Miss Milla, Tick Tock Boq!" He ruffled his hand through Boq's hair and Boq squirmed, laughing.

"At least I'm married, you cad." Avaric laughed also, a good hearty sound that really hadn't been heard in years.

"What d'yo mean by that?" He aimed a punch at his friend, but Boq dodged it, grinning.

"You know what I mean, you Gillikinese _whore_."

"Better a whore than a married man!" They must have looked so silly, two men in suits badgering each other.

"Like little boys", an older, bejeweled woman sniffed, unnoticed by the joking men. The older woman then turned again to her discussion partner, but found that he had left, and towards the men no less!

"Men…" she muttered under the good graces of her exterior. Grumbling inwardly, she gingerly picked up the hem of her gown's cape and adjusted her glittery silver mask. "Lady Eminence! How wonderful of you to be here!" Hearing her name, she flashed a terribly wide smile to the approaching stranger.

"I wouldn't have missed it for the world, Miss Galinda."

The light fastened onto Avaric's glowing face, ripples of gold shimmering on his fine skin. Boq grinned as he stared at the man he so fondly admired. Yet something lurked beneath in those watery gray eyes. A shiver of unease washed over Boq like the icy lake water that Elphie hated so much.

Elphie…

Boq stumbled backward slightly, remembering something not meant to be remembered, yet before he could remark, something that was painful enough to be remembered slammed into his shoulder.

He whirled around, confused, in the direction of his attacker, but before he could succumb to the pain in his shoulder, he opened his arms up wide and embraced the man. With or without the dark skin and tattoos, Boq reckoned he could spot his old friend anywhere.

"Fiyero!" Avaric patted the man on the back, forgetting much in this frenzy of reunion.

"How goes it, Sir Prince?" Fiyero laughed, tossing back his shoulder-length hair that had gotten in the way of introductions..

"I ask the same of you, Sir Margreave."

"Fucked that wife of yours, already, have we? I can see the glow of utter delight on your face." Boq sputtered at his friend's callousness and, in other circumstances, bravery. Fiyero looked built enough to kill lions and tigers and even _bears_.

Thank Unnamed God, Boq thought, that Fiyero decided to laugh.

"She's pregnant with our second child, actually. Quite unnaturally fertile." Avaric grinned, a most malicious type of grin, thought Boq, but thought no more of it.

"A boy, am I right? It would be terrible if the first-born was a girl." Fiyero cocked his head at this, smiling faintly as if considering a different fate.

"What's wrong with girls, Margreave?"

A servant girl approached them with a tray of cocktails, and Avaric plucked a severe, lime colored drink from the chilled tray. He sipped it, relishing the biting flavor.

"Girls are dreadful trouble."

The fine hairs on the back of his neck prickled slightly, the muscles on his back froze rigid under his suit. He recognized the forcefully gentle breathing instantly, and from somewhere in his life.

"Are we?" The musical lilt to her voice scratched at his ears. "Are we really?"

Judging from the barely masked longing in Boq's face, he knew he couldn't be wrong.

"Miss Glinda."

Boq was startled at the initial harshness in Avaric's voice. Perhaps a slight cold interfering with his senses? Avaric, with his glacial beauty and unnatural poise, had always seemed quite cold. Boq wondered for a moment if Avaric had ever fallen in love and if that really mattered to someone like him. He toyed a bit with his thoughts, and remembered something Milla told him a while ago when the subject of Shiz came up. Something about inefficiency? And then he wandered over to the unspoken thoughts, the thoughts about the Philosophy Club roughly a year ago…two?

However, before Boq could recall what desperately needed to be recalled, his thoughts, as all thoughts of Munchkins go, fell upon his loved one…which can _not_, should Milla find out, be Glinda. For Boq was a good farmer, and a better man. Cheating is cheating, and so the wickedness in thought were just so: wicked.

So he wondered (since the conversation was probably meant for the two of them, and Boq didn't want to be rude), and wondered. Had Avaric "done" his Milla at Shiz? Boq glanced around, much like a person just realizing the sudden disappearance or forever loss of something.

Where had Fiyero gone?

Avaric casually glanced her over, cocking an eyebrow approvingly. Beautiful as usual, he thought. And, like everyone else, usual beauty.

Not wanting to seem like a total ass, he extended his hand and surprisingly (or not so?) she accepted it, the irrevocable glamour in her diamond ring stinging his eyes. It glittered copiously, like everything else in his life, and judging from the cut and color, he surmised it must have cost a fortune.

The lady before him, so beautiful and girlish, looked suddenly so tired as she glanced up at him. He breathed in the slight rings around her mouth, caused from smiling too much and far too wide. His handsomeness choked in her leaning frame, also caused by wedding preparations and tottering around in heels.

And that poor, tired, beautifully tragic doll-of-a-person embraced his damned self, so spontaneous that even Boq stepped back in amazement and Fiyero, now having moved to the other side of the wedding, stared unabashed. His body and heart at the same time stiffened and stopped.

"I miss her, Avaric." Her tears soaked through his suit and she murmured against him, a little girl dressed in a wedding gown and tiara, just whispering the name _Elphie, Elphie, Elphie_, like a strange song that seemed never to end. He stood there, insides doing cartwheels, as he again welcomed those ruining tears onto his coat.

Boq just stood there, taking in the sight. He saw a terrible crease of lines where Glinda's ring had moved upwards on her finger, and the probability of a ruined suit caused by Glinda's joyous crying.

But he digressed, as he always did. For they were rich, and also beautiful.

And the rich and beautiful can afford a ruined suit and an ill-fit ring.

Fortune, they can spare.

_Said the Scarecrow. "No one is exempt from grief."_


End file.
